Adwatch: Bob Casey Is Pro-Little League

With a scant two weeks until the midterm elections, the airwaves are clogged with political advertisements. And, as a viewer with limited commercial-watching time, you may be wondering, “But what ads do I watch?” Most of them are hideous, but every once in a while there’s one that’s so over-the-top hilarious I can’t pull myself away.

That’s where this little new featured comes in. Every weekday now until election day, November 7, Philadelphia Will Do will be doing Adwatch, a feature where the best and brightest of television and radio campaign ads show up. Although not an official part of Adwatch (these distinctions must be made, natch), go take a listen to yesterday’s Newspaper Guild anti-Tierney advertisement and then follow past the jump for the first edition of Adwatch.

Our first entrant is Bob Casey’s ad, “Get the Record Straight.”

• Amazing intro. “Rick Santorum is attacking Bob Casey? Well… Bob Casey likes old women!” Nice.
• I also like the part where it shows Casey “modernizing” investment practices. He’s flipping through papers, making charts and graphs and figuring out how to save Pennsylvania money!
• The Rick Santorum attack stuff is, as usual, nice and over the top. I love how the announcer’s inflection gets so nasty when he begins talking about Santorum. Is there just one guy who does all political announcing? I want to meet him.
• Let me say here that I don’t quite get the “Rick Santorum voted for a pay raise” thing. I get it in the State Senate, but can people really be fooled into attaching Ricky onto that? These posters were in my neighborhood the other night:
  

  I don’t like the idea of paying anyone to be our U.S. senator, let alone Rick Santorum. But, uh, $165,200? That’s not that much! He’s a senator! Bob Casey will be making the same amount. Ooh, three pay raises! Really, there are plenty of reasons to dislike Santorum. His $165k salary might not even make the list.

• The ending is the best part, though. Not only is Bob Casey talking to a little kids’ baseball team, but he’s fixing the hat of one of the players! Bob Casey for correctly-worn baseball caps! Look out, Dontrelle Willis!